Yeah so I figured a Dune based variant would be pretty sick, (Preferably not a TOME spinoff, I prefer Z)

It could be based on the 6 novels (and the 6 by Brian Herbert), and things could be mixed up a bit so you get more stuff

The final fight could be maybe Leto the Tyrant, with Duncan Idaho, guard of Leto as the floor 99 boss

There could be many races, like freemen, harkonnen, atreides, ixian, tleilaxu, face dancer (who could have some special abilities to mimic enemies), gholas, etc

There is also many possibilities for classes, and in this variant the sex WOULD influence your choice of class, as Bene Gesserit, Honored Matres and Fish Speakers could only be females

Warrior/Fighter
Fremen fighter (as they are somewhat different, though something should be changed so it's not confused with Fremen itself, they could get the ability to ride sandworms)
Suk Doctor
Mentat
Bene Gesserit
Honored Matre
Fish Speaker

Many monsters and uniques could be in it, for example a battle with a sandworm could be pretty epic
Items wouldn't be hard to figure out either, and to be really like the book we could add things like
Shield aggravating sandworms
Shield-Lasgun reaction creating a big explosion (dealing huge damage to monsters all around AND to the player/monster that was shielded)

Also, pretty much all characters in the book (There really are many) could be unique monsters

I think it would be better just to mix all ages (The whole series spans on something like five thousand years) to get more content, even though it would be illogical to have Paullus atreides and Leto II in the same period of time (But who would notice anyways)

Finally, instead of a big world map, there could be several small maps with a few towns/dungeons and the possibility for space travel from a planet to the other
(Some world would be smaller than others, as Arrakis would probably have more content than say Ginaz)

So, yeah, basically that's it, the only problem is that I've never programmed a variant, but it would really be a cool project

Rizwan

February 27, 2008, 06:24

Nice idea ;) but there might be copyright and licensing issues :(

xxitheworld

February 27, 2008, 22:02

Well I don't know what they did for Zangband, but the dune books were written in about the same period, Dune (the first) was written in 1965 while Nine Princes in Amber was published in 1970,
There is also the fact that Frank Herbert died something like 22 years ago (Though his son continued his work in the years after)
I don't really know, but I mean it's not like we're selling anything, it's more like honoring this masterpiece of science fiction.

Somebody enlighten me

Nick

February 27, 2008, 22:05

Somebody enlighten me

Google for Pernangband McCaffrey

xxitheworld

February 27, 2008, 22:24

Wow, that's really sad -_-

But

1- How could we contact Brian Herbert or whoever is in charge of this
2- Would anyone be interested cause if not there's no point in contacting anyone

It says: "No plans [to make a board game or rpg]. The rights for DUNE games are currently tied up. Unfortunately the rights are no longer available and are now controlled by the producers of the DUNE and CHILDREN OF DUNE miniseries."

I'm not sure where video games fall, but I'd think that contacting Brian Herbert would be the one you're looking for.

2 - Interested, yes - but not interested to make it myself.

xxitheworld

March 13, 2008, 00:40

First things first, I started toying with angband edit files.

Now, it would greatly help me if someone posted a list of all the flags (SUST_CON, REGEN, etc)
It would make my editing a great deal easier

class flags:
EXTRA_SHOT (ranger, can easily make a class munchkiny)
BRAVERY_30 (get intrinsic Rfear at clvl 30)
BLESS_WEAPON (priest's restriction to blunt or blessed weapons)
CUMBER_GLOVE (gloves hurt spellcasting, all mage-type spellcasters have it in V)
ZERO_FAIL (can achieve 0% fail rate for spells, otherwise minimum fail rate is 5%,
(mage and priest only in V)
BEAM (get beams more often from bolt spells (and wands/rods(?))
CHOOSE_SPELLS (can choose which spells to learn (all mage-type spellcasters have it))
PSEUDO_ID_HEAVY (strong pseudo- can get 'excellent', 'terrible', 'special', etc,
otherwise it is only 'good' or 'cursed')
PSEUDO_ID_IMPROV (pseudo id gets faster as you get to higher levels-
mage is the only one who doesn't have it)

if you want to see object and monster flags as well, just look in defines.h with the source files, objects flags start around line 1845, monster flags start around 2045.